Baltimore’s
CITY PAPER
9/14/2005
BIG
BOOKS FEATURE
| Big Books Issue
Good Vibrations
By Christina
Royster-Hemby
LAST YEAR, PSYCHOTHERAPIST MARGARET MCCRAW was listening
to a radio talk show while driving from Baltimore to Virginia
for business. The on-air guest author gave the show’s
young female host advice on finding romance, which included
wearing sensual clothing all the time—just in case Mr.
Right should appear—going to bars and social events
four times a week, lowering standards to increase the dating
pool, and putting career-related goals on hold.
McCraw
believed that this advice was based on a fear that promotes
the idea that all the good men and women are in committed
relationships. “It’s the scarcity concept that
creates a lifetime of unfulfilled dreams,” she says.
Translation: If you believe that there aren’t enough
good men or women to go around, this will become your reality.
“The
self-fulfilling prophecy really does exist,” the Baltimore
native says. “So it is important to be thoughtful about
what we tell ourselves, as well as the statistics we buy into,
which become our reality.”
In the
preface of her recently released Tune Into Love: Attract
Romance Through the Power of Vibrational Matching (Hampton
Roads Publishing Co.), McCraw offers three simple ideas about
romance that have nothing to do with underwear, bar-hopping,
or expecting less: 1) You can have it all. 2) There is an
abundance of desirable relationships, easily available to
each of us. 3) Love is a state of mind that is fostered and
re-created when you truly love yourself.
Surrounded
by red cannas and yellow roses in her garden at her home in
Northeast Baltimore, McCraw is trying to teach a reporter
about vibrations, personal power, and mandalas—sacred
iconography that symbolizes wholeness used in meditation for
the purpose of realizing inner experience. She offers sound
advice for attracting desirable relationships, and keeping
existing relationships desirable.
“We
are always a vibrational match for the energetic signals we
send out into the universe,” McCraw says.
Before
you dismiss McCraw as yet another touchy-feely woman peddling
false hopes to the lonely and desperate, know this: She did
not come to relationship advice through some pyramid scheme
of motivational outreach. She holds advanced degrees in business
and psychology and is a faculty member at American Holistic
University in Goshen, Va. Her romantic advice is based on
techniques she calls vibrational matching, strategies that
have worked in her career as a consultant for businesses and
in private practice. And while “vibrational matching”
may sound like New Age malarkey, it’s hard to dismiss
her successful track record.
McCraw
points to a mandala she commissioned an artist to create,
a design readers of her book could meditate on and use to
tune into their specific desires. McCraw believes each individual
attunes to the mandala differently. It is an integral step
of vibrational matching, which McCraw defines as “the
deliberate intention to attract our desires by aligning and
focusing our thoughts, emotions, and beliefs with what we
want.”
To McCraw,
vibrational matching is more than mere positive thinking,
and in Tune Into Love, she outlines how to do it
and use it to achieve goals. She discourages venting about
what isn’t wanted and emphasizes staying focused on
what is. Case in point: If you want to attract an emotionally
available partner, but instead focus your attention on the
fear of being alone, guess who you’ll attract? Somebody
emotionally unavailable. With vibrational matching you can
find someone who fulfills your desire, she says. The key is
to stay focused on desire rather than fear.
“Whatever
we give attention to, consciously or unconsciously, becomes
a magnet for the circumstances of our lives,” she says.
“You have to feel and really believe that you deserve
it. I believe there are an abundance of men and women for
everyone who desires to attract an ideal partner. Whatever
we attract, whether it is wanted or unwanted, is always a
vibrational match for the energetic signals we send into the
collective consciousness of the universe.”
Though
Tune Into Love was published this year, Margaret McCraw
says its pages had been writing themselves in her head for
the last decade. She has spent most of her career in health
care—in hospitals, at community mental-health facilities,
and as a licensed therapist in private practice. After earning
a master’s degree in business administration in the
early 1990s from Loyola College, she migrated to management
positions, where she found a practical application of some
of the ideas that have always informed her health-care work.
As in
psychiatric therapy, “if you focus and energize the
problem, you’re not really helping somebody,”
McCraw says. “You need to shift it very quickly on into
the solution. Just like an argument: If I get into an argument
with somebody and I stay focused on the conflict, we’re
not going anywhere.”
In 1994,
McCraw opened her own behavioral-health consulting business
in Baltimore, and she turned to vibrational matching to attract
clients. “I learned these principles by applying them
in my own life,” she says. “My desire was to open
a consulting business. And I was able to attract a successful
business using the techniques I outlined in my book.”
While
that reads like self-serving proof, McCraw says vibrational
matching has always been a part of her life, even before she
called it that. McCraw says her mother taught her about abundance
and that she grew up approaching life from the standpoint
of having an “abundance consciousness,” from which
she created life strategies that she later dubbed vibrational
matching.
For Tune
Into Love, McCraw applies these ideas to the elusive
laws of attraction, with each chapter explaining the process
in clearly defined, easy-to-read steps. She offers several
exercises designed to give readers a clearer idea of what
is sincerely desired—mental images more specifically
detailed than a “mate.” She also gives numerous
examples of vibrational matching success stories.
“You
can’t activate your intentions before you know what
your desires are,” McCraw says. “Instead of saying
‘I can’t find a mate,’ change to ‘I
intend to strengthen my belief that I can attract an ideal
mate.’ You have to ask yourself, Where in my experience
or somebody else’s experience has this ever been true?
And then you have to focus on the fact that this person did
it, knowing that you can do it, too.”
And to
McCraw, vibrational matching is an ongoing lifestyle choice
that doesn’t end once the initial desire is achieved,
be it a business success or romantic partner. In fact, she
is working on a book to be released in 2006 that teaches couples
how to apply her principles to build upon current relationships.
McCraw feels that vibrational matching can be used to create
the relationship you desire and, ultimately, the life that
you desire.
“These
principles can help you attract whatever you desire in your
life,” she says. “Be it a romantic relationship,
good health, a desirable career, a better relationship with
a boss or a friend.”
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